Two sailors are dead and a third is missing in the sinking of a fishing boat on Monday morning off the northern coast of Spain, while the other seven crew members have been rescued, according to regional authorities .
The boat, dubbed ‘Vilaboa Uno’, sank at dawn on Monday when it was six nautical miles (11 kilometers) from the northern end of the bay in Santander, the capital of Cantabria, where it had its base, Spanish maritime rescue announced on Twitter.
The cause of the sinking is at this stage unknown.
“There were ten crew members on board: seven were rescued, there is one missing and two dead,” the president of this region of northern Spain, Miguel Ángel Revilla, said on Twitter, lamenting ” a new misfortune at sea”.
The government representative (equivalent to a prefect) in the Cantabria region, Ainoa Quiñones, told Cadena Ser radio that the deceased were a Spaniard and a Ghanaian. The missing sailor is of Peruvian nationality.
According to Ms. Quiñones, one of the seven rescued crew members is in serious condition.
Santander’s maritime rescue manager, Germán Erostarbe, assured public television TVE that the “Vilaboa Uno” made its emergency call at 4:10 a.m. (2:10 GMT), indicating that it was the victim of “an leak” and “that the boat was in danger of sinking”.
The sinking was so fast that, despite their efforts, “the fishermen did not have time to launch their lifeboat” and “the rescuers found them in the water”, said Mr. Erostarb.
“Fortunately, the fishing boats” that came to their rescue “were quite close to the area of the sinking and in less than an hour they managed to save the people,” said the head of the rescue services.
“Terrible news”
According to Mr Erostarbe, one of the people rescued is suffering from “quite severe hypothermia”, but the others are fine and when they arrived at the port, they descended “under their own power”.
Although the causes of the accident are not known, it is not “normal” for a ship like the “Vilaboa Uno” to sink so quickly, when “the weather situation was not bad”, a- he added, specifying that the Marine Accident Commission would open an investigation.
On Twitter, the Spanish Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, deplored “terrible news”, saying she hoped that “the search operations for the missing crew member (…) can bring good news”.
The last major fishing tragedy in Spain dates back to February 15, 2022, when the vessel “Villa de Pitanxo”, based in Galicia (north-west Spain), sank 450 kilometers off the island of Newfoundland, Canada, with 24 crew members.
Three sailors had survived. Of the 21 others, only nine bodies had been recovered.
According to the Spanish company Nores, which owns the vessel, the trawler sank after “a sudden stoppage of the main engine, which left the boat without propulsion or steering, exposed to wind and waves”.
The crew consisted of 16 Spaniards, five Peruvians and three Ghanaians.